Automatic retinal blood vessel parameter calculation in spectral domain optical coherence tomography

摘要

Measurement of retinal blood vessel parameters like the blood blow in the vessels may have significant impact on the study and diagnosis of glaucoma, a leading blinding disease worldwide. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a non-invasive imaging technique that can provide not only microscopic structural imaging of the retina but also functional information like the blood flow velocity in the retina. The aim of this study is to automatically extract the parameters of retinal blood vessels like the 3D orientation, the vessel diameters, as well as the corresponding absolute blood flow velocity in the vessel. The parameters were extracted from circular OCT scans around the optic disc. By removing the surface reflection through simple segmentation of the circular OCT scans a blood vessel shadowgram can be generated. The lateral coordinates and the diameter of each blood vessel are extracted from the shadowgram through a series of signal processing. Upon determination of the lateral position and the vessel diameter, the coordinate in the depth direction of each blood vessel is calculated in combination with the Doppler information for the vessel. The extraction of the vessel coordinates and diameter makes it possible to calculate the orientation of the vessel in reference to the direction of the incident sample light, which in turn can be used to calculate the absolute blood flow velocity and the flow rate.